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Pride 2016

June is Pride month in Toronto. This was the 35th year for the Pride march. The city has the world's largest Trans march, a growing Dyke march and the annual Pride parade on the final day.

For me, the Aids Candlelight Vigil feels like the true beginning of Pride.

Each year we gather to honour the 1,000,000's of people who have been impacted by HIV/AIDS. I thought about the volunteers at Casey House who have touched so many lives during the past 28 years. www.caseyhouse.com

The Pride Parade was dedicated to the victims who died at Pulse nightclub in Orlando FL.

Pride weekend

Top Left: Two Unicorns, a Bear and a Silver Fox.

Top Right: the LGBTQ community have had a long challenging history with the Toronto Police force. The bathhouse raids in the 80's and the Pussy Palace raid in 2000, have strained the relationship. In recent years it is obvious that the Police Force have made visible strides to bridge the gap. It was nice to see so many Police engaged in Pride Festivities.

Trudeau makes history by being the first Canadian Prime Minister to march in a Pride Parade.

For more Trudeau porn check out the following articles: Theo Ward wrote an interesting and perceptive article titled "Look at this picture". Ward writes " This G7 leader decided to bare his hairless chest in a salmon-pink shirt, and slip into curvy white jeans (there isn't a straight guy alive that can pull off white jeans without irony - don't even bother disagreeing with me) and shaking his baby-maker under a high, July sun while being hosed down by a hundred water pistols"

An emotional Pride Parade

Emotions ran from one end of the spectrum to the other. A moment of silence was dedicated to the victims of the Orlando massacre.

Our Prime Minister brought a feeling of Trudeau-mania to the parade.

And then the honorary guests of the Parade, Black Lives Matter pulled out a sledgehammer and took a whack at the hornets nest. Their action brought back a political component that has been missing for so many years. BLM stopped the parade and staged a sit-in until their list of demands were accepted. The co-chairs signed off on the demands within 30 mins. Most of the coverage of BLM and PrideToronto was negative, however BLM did manage to get world coverage and open a dialogue with both Pride Toronto and Torontonians. It is unfortunate that BLM didn't collaborate with other marginalized groups. This would have better addressed the issues imbedded within PrideToronto which go beyond the colour of your skin.

Top left: Tag team effort. PM Justin Trudeau was our Muse. The silhouette was inspired by Bob the Drag Queen's orange and yellow outfit from season 8 of Ru Paul's drag race.

Top Right: Cabinboyknits with two international models Jamie Godin and Fashion Santa himself, Paul Mason @PaulMasonModel

Bottom: 3 Kilometres in 6" heels

We were fortunate enough to have our photo taken by number of great photographers, including Jennifer Roberts for Maclean's magazine and the above photo by Rai Allen http://www.raiallen.com/